-
Yeah the month pause almost certainly nuked it… pausing and reactivating is a confirmed learning phase reset trigger. But there’s a bigger issue here. A 2023 PMax that was crushing on Display with minimal Search was essentially running on an older behavior model that Google has been phasing out.
So you got hit twice simultaneously –> full learning reset PLUS the campaign re-initialized against current 2026 PMax behavior, not the 2023 version it had spent years optimizing on. That Display-heavy performance is basically gone forever.
For my larger ecom clients I’d never pause a high-performing PMax for more than a few days… if a pause is absolutely necessary I drop budget to the absolute minimum instead to keep the signal alive. The historical learning is far too valuable to risk.
Your best path now is accepting the new reality, let it relearn for a full 6 weeks without touching it, and see where it settles. The Display separate campaign won’t replicate it because that muscle memory lived inside PMax’s cross-channel optimization, not in the audience lists themselves.
